One of many small staff of tribes comprising the Illinois department of the Algonquian linguistic kin, the Miamis emerged as a pivotal tribe merely through the French and British imperial wars, the Miami Confederacy wars of the eighteenth century, and the treaty-making interval of the 19th century. The Miamis reached their height of political significance within the Indian confederacies which blocked the Northwest Territory within the 1790's and through the conflict of 1812.